“Another Brick in the Wall”

It was a Saturday morning in August of 2009, when Stanton’s employees were amazed to find that a 150 foot section of the retaining wall around our parking lot was laying on the ground. This is not considered a normal day for Stanton’s Sheet Music. Further investigation led only to more speculation as to why it fell, especially since there were no eye witnesses present between 7:00 and 8:30 am—the presumed time the event took place. It might have been weakened by the heavy downpours that Columbus had received 3 days earlier; it could have been that someone bumped it with their car and it toppled like dominos; it could have simply been its “time to go.” At this point, who knows?

What transpired next was the arrival of a small team of insurance adjusters/investigators to assess the damage and estimate a replacement cost. To clean it up, a crew came and took 7 truck loads of brick and hauled it off to the dump! Seeing that Stanton’s is right in downtown Columbus, the next step was to find a contractor that would be familiar with how the city operates. A contractor was chosen–Pomante Builders–and we began the long process of architect drawings, zoning meetings, cost estimates/revisions and various communications with the City of Columbus and the insurance company handling the claim.

After months of deliberations, the City of Columbus and the insurance company finally approved the plans and repair costs in March 2010. The project began in early June after waiting for the weather and the contractor’s schedule to clear. The first step was to dig out the old footer and put a new one in, but in order to do that 5 feet of the existing parking lot needed to be cut back so that the heavy equipment could work on both sides of the old footer. Pictured above is the start of the new retaining wall, sitting on top of the newly poured footer. The picture to the left is the old, fallen wall. We’ll keep you updated as this project progresses; and don’t worry—there’s still plenty of space to parking in our lot!